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I'm in the middle of reading a great book on geoengineering, Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade. Engagingly written and comprehensive; I recommend it highly. F

I'm in the middle of reading a great book on geoengineering, Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade. Engagingly written and comprehensive; I recommend it highly. From the introduction: If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly). Morton goes on to make the case for considering geoengineering, and for ramping up research on it. I don't know that I can do justice to the argument in a short summary, but one key point is the extent to which we're already doing it in an unplanned way. We all know about all the carbon dioxide we're putting in the air, along with other greenhouse gases -- nitrous oxide, for example -- but there's also the massive amount of reactive nitrogen we're creating, mostly for fertilizer. We all know about the massive local environmental effects of burning coal, but there's also some evidence that coal smoke has a cooling effect; changing from coal to nuclear may actually worsen warming in the short run. I was favorably disposed toward geoengineering before I got the book, so I can't claim to have been won over, but there was an awful lot I didn't know about it -- for example, how the various approaches would affect different regions of the globe differently, and how those effects could be adjusted to some extent, though not optimized for everyone simultaneously. Again, I highly recommend it.

CamperBob2 11y ago
If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly). That's extremely hard to believe. Does he show the math?
- ScottBurson 11y ago
  No, but I see on Wikipedia: In 2007 there were over 50,000 active coal plants worldwide and this number is expected to grow. [0] One nuke plant a week for 20 years would be 1000 plants. So the numbers don't seem unreasonable at all. That's not necessarily an argument that we shouldn't build more nuclear power capacity; only that we can't expect it to be the entire solution to global warming this century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Environmental_impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Envi...
- krasin 11y ago
  According to Wikipedia ([1]), the world energy consumption is on the order of 20 TW. A typical Russian nuclear reactor outputs 1 GW ([2]). It gives us 20000 reactors to cover the current human needs. It seems that the math is correct. At the same time, it does not prove that it's impossible to go mostly nuclear. It just shows the need for mass production of smaller reactors, so that we can make&install them by thousands a month across the globe. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Russi...
- T-A 11y ago
  Let's se... According to [1], world electric power generation from coal in 2014 was 8726 TWh. The largest nuclear power plant in the US, Palo Verde, delivers on average 3.3 GW [2], or 365243.3 = 28908 GWh/year. So you would need 8726/28.9 = 302 nuclear power plants of that size to replace all coal plants. At a rate of one per week, it would take less than six years. But! Palo Verde has three reactors. If you assume that he really meant "reactor" rather than "plant", and went with 1 GW as its output, it would take a little more than 19 years. [1] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    Interesting, thanks. What confused me is that we've all seen pie charts like the one at http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene... that show the relative "market share" of various energy sources with nuclear playing a significant but not dominant role. In this case it's 11% nuclear, 39% coal. It's easy but incorrect to assume that the number of plants of each type is proportional. Wikipedia says there are about 50,000 coal plants online, as ScottBurson notes, but I know there aren't 50000*11/39 = 14000 nuclear plants in the world. Googling "number of nuclear power plants" returns an answer of 438 "reactors." Obviously the number of plants is somewhat smaller, and we don't know if the statistic includes military reactors on subs and carriers. Call it 400. So what I've missed appears to be the fact that a typical nuclear plant must generate 14000/400 = 35x as much power as a typical coal plant. The largest plants of both types are in the gigawatt class, so most of those 50000 coal plants must be significantly smaller. So, at some point, it must have been decided that most nuclear plants needed to be as powerful as the largest coal plants. Absent a change in policy, that clearly denies the nuclear industry the benefits of economies of scale... unless those economies are realized on a per-plant basis. (E.g., if it doesn't cost much more to build a 1 GW nuke plant than a 100 MW one, you might as well build the former.)
- Pietertje 11y ago
  The math is rather easy, it is however questionable what you define as one of the largest nuclear power plants. Most power plants have multiple units, if you take the power per unit you more or less end up with 20 years. Capacity of large nuclear power plant unit: ~1 GWe [1] Total world electricity consumption is 20,900 TWh/year [2], of which 40% is generated by coal power plants. A total power of ~1000 GWe, so you'll need 1000 nuclear power plants to replace all coal-fired plants by nuclear power plants. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption
Simorgh 11y ago
The Economist just recently published an article on geoengineering. If you read between the lines it's actually very scary stuff. Some academics, notably Chomsky, openly talk about the extinction of our species as a plausible outcome of global warming. I asked him about geoengineering. He just said, 'it seems hazardous.' http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678963-man-made-global-cooling-scary-may-become-necessary-if-all-else-fails http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678963-man-ma...
- fleitz 11y ago
  This is why I can't stand talking to most enviros they claim on one hand that cc will end humanity and then claim geoengineering is too dangerous...
madaxe_again 11y ago
I'd actually say that delivering one large power station per week is a fairly unambitious goal, and that if the will were there, globally, dozens of plants could be onlined per day. That said, uranium is a finite resource, and even if we built all of these plants we'd be looking at peak uranium in the not too distant future. Therefore, either we go for thorium, which is looking increasingly promising, or as you say we consider geoengineering. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from.
- ScottBurson 11y ago
  Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from. Not remotely true. The amount of solar energy that falls on the Earth and is not immediately reflected is 120PW (petaWatts), or 120,000TW. The total amount of energy being used by humans is about 15TW. So the heat we're generating changes the Earth's energy balance by a little more than .01%. (Numbers from Morton's book.) Essentially all of that 120PW is also being radiated away as infrared from the night side of the Earth.
- fleitz 11y ago
  Everything is a finite resource, the sun isn't going to last forever either.

CamperBob2 11y ago

If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly). That's extremely hard to believe. Does he show the math?

ScottBurson 11y ago
No, but I see on Wikipedia: In 2007 there were over 50,000 active coal plants worldwide and this number is expected to grow. [0] One nuke plant a week for 20 years would be 1000 plants. So the numbers don't seem unreasonable at all. That's not necessarily an argument that we shouldn't build more nuclear power capacity; only that we can't expect it to be the entire solution to global warming this century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Environmental_impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Envi...
krasin 11y ago
According to Wikipedia ([1]), the world energy consumption is on the order of 20 TW. A typical Russian nuclear reactor outputs 1 GW ([2]). It gives us 20000 reactors to cover the current human needs. It seems that the math is correct. At the same time, it does not prove that it's impossible to go mostly nuclear. It just shows the need for mass production of smaller reactors, so that we can make&install them by thousands a month across the globe. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Russi...
T-A 11y ago
Let's se... According to [1], world electric power generation from coal in 2014 was 8726 TWh. The largest nuclear power plant in the US, Palo Verde, delivers on average 3.3 GW [2], or 365243.3 = 28908 GWh/year. So you would need 8726/28.9 = 302 nuclear power plants of that size to replace all coal plants. At a rate of one per week, it would take less than six years. But! Palo Verde has three reactors. If you assume that he really meant "reactor" rather than "plant", and went with 1 GW as its output, it would take a little more than 19 years. [1] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Interesting, thanks. What confused me is that we've all seen pie charts like the one at http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Generation-by-Energy-Source#tspQvChart http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene... that show the relative "market share" of various energy sources with nuclear playing a significant but not dominant role. In this case it's 11% nuclear, 39% coal. It's easy but incorrect to assume that the number of plants of each type is proportional. Wikipedia says there are about 50,000 coal plants online, as ScottBurson notes, but I know there aren't 50000*11/39 = 14000 nuclear plants in the world. Googling "number of nuclear power plants" returns an answer of 438 "reactors." Obviously the number of plants is somewhat smaller, and we don't know if the statistic includes military reactors on subs and carriers. Call it 400. So what I've missed appears to be the fact that a typical nuclear plant must generate 14000/400 = 35x as much power as a typical coal plant. The largest plants of both types are in the gigawatt class, so most of those 50000 coal plants must be significantly smaller. So, at some point, it must have been decided that most nuclear plants needed to be as powerful as the largest coal plants. Absent a change in policy, that clearly denies the nuclear industry the benefits of economies of scale... unless those economies are realized on a per-plant basis. (E.g., if it doesn't cost much more to build a 1 GW nuke plant than a 100 MW one, you might as well build the former.)
Pietertje 11y ago
The math is rather easy, it is however questionable what you define as one of the largest nuclear power plants. Most power plants have multiple units, if you take the power per unit you more or less end up with 20 years. Capacity of large nuclear power plant unit: ~1 GWe [1] Total world electricity consumption is 20,900 TWh/year [2], of which 40% is generated by coal power plants. A total power of ~1000 GWe, so you'll need 1000 nuclear power plants to replace all coal-fired plants by nuclear power plants. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption

Simorgh 11y ago

The Economist just recently published an article on geoengineering. If you read between the lines it's actually very scary stuff. Some academics, notably Chomsky, openly talk about the extinction of our species as a plausible outcome of global warming. I asked him about geoengineering. He just said, 'it seems hazardous.' http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678963-man-made-global-cooling-scary-may-become-necessary-if-all-else-fails http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678963-man-ma...

fleitz 11y ago
This is why I can't stand talking to most enviros they claim on one hand that cc will end humanity and then claim geoengineering is too dangerous...

madaxe_again 11y ago

I'd actually say that delivering one large power station per week is a fairly unambitious goal, and that if the will were there, globally, dozens of plants could be onlined per day. That said, uranium is a finite resource, and even if we built all of these plants we'd be looking at peak uranium in the not too distant future. Therefore, either we go for thorium, which is looking increasingly promising, or as you say we consider geoengineering. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from.

ScottBurson 11y ago
Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, another problem remains, which is thermodynamics - the waste heat from our energy use has to go somewhere, and right now the only place it can go is into the earth, or into space - and we're not doing much of either, other than inadvertently. If we keep up current rates of energy growth, we'll cook ourselves before too long regardless of what source the power comes from. Not remotely true. The amount of solar energy that falls on the Earth and is not immediately reflected is 120PW (petaWatts), or 120,000TW. The total amount of energy being used by humans is about 15TW. So the heat we're generating changes the Earth's energy balance by a little more than .01%. (Numbers from Morton's book.) Essentially all of that 120PW is also being radiated away as infrared from the night side of the Earth.
fleitz 11y ago
Everything is a finite resource, the sun isn't going to last forever either.